Balance of power – security, credibility, and technology

Ukraine’s Interim President Oleksandr Turchynov did not mince words this week in talking of War, indeed a third World War, and he certainly knew what he was saying. He accused Russia of leading the world towards a third world war in the way the Kremlin government of President Vladmir Putin of Russia was supporting the pro Russian activists who seized government buildings in Donetsk in the east of Ukraine and successfully, with Russian aid, repelled the efforts of the central government in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine to eject them. War invariably is a product of a collapse or breach of a security system in any environment, leading to escalation of violence, a breakdown of law and order and the emergence of a massive government in ability to protect lives and property. This is a familiar situation in many parts of the world today and our duty here is to highlight some of the nations that have had in recent times to deal with security as a top priority in the last few weeks. Nigeria had a massive security meeting of all state governors on Thursday this week, over the blood letting and incessant killing of Nigerians by the blood thirsty Boko Haram, where it was resolved that the army should use all means to find the school girls abducted from a girls school in Chibok in North East Nigeria. At the meeting it was also resolved to call to order the inflammatory letter of the governor of Adamawa state who had accused the Nigerian President of genocide against the north in the way it was handling the Boko Haram menace. In reality, the language and rhetoric of war and its outbreak are as familiar as they can be chilling, hair raising and outright ominous. US Secretary of State John Kerry accused Russia over Ukraine, after a break down of agreements, of ‘distraction, deception and destabilisation. ‘In turn his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergey Levrov accused the US of trying to ‘seize’ Ukraine regardless of its environment to further American and European interests at the expense of Russian security. On his Asian tour US President Barak Obama was not left out of the global beating of the drums of war. In Japan he promised that the US would stand by Japan in its bid to defend the islands in the Pacific that China has threatened to take by force from Japan because they are Chinese. In Seoul, South Korea the US President Barak Obama said that the US ‘stands shoulder to shoulder’ with the people of S Koreawhich is vintage Tony Blair at the outset of the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq by his friend President George Bush of the US- in the conflict with N Korea which has promised to do its fourth nuclear tests in defiance of global security outcry. In the heat of all these, however, I could still detect the language of lamentation, capitulation or defeat, as in a war, in this week’s explanation of Najib Razak the PM of Malaysia, in the handwringing way he tried to assure the civilised world that his nation had tried its best in the way it has, and is still looking for the Malaysian Airline plane that disappeared from the blue skies with almost 300 people recently into the vast, literally bottomless Indian Ocean. This happened in the same environment with Australia which is helping to use technology the Malaysians don’t have to look for the plane, and which this week showed the world that it still relishes having the British Royal family as Australia’s Head of State, given the warm and emotional way they received the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and their son on a two week royal tour of Australia which ended this week. My contention this week with regard to the issues I have raised and the nations involved, is that for the world to have peace there must be respect for international law on the global scene and respect for the rule of law as well as the protection of life and property in the respective nations of the world that make up the comity of nations as in the UN. The power for the observance of international law is vested in the UN Security Council where the veto resides in five powerful nations that guarantee world peace and security in a balance of power. These nations are US, UK, Russia, France and China. In member states of the UN, the government of the day guarantees the security and the safety of lives and properties of its citizens. It is in the context of international law and its violation, and the use of power of the states mentioned here today that l now proceed to make some comments on the actions and inactions of their leaders and the consequences of these. Let me start with a Shakespearean analogy on the concepts of peace and war. In Henry the fifth before the battle of Agincourt, it was said – In peace there is nothing so befits a man as modest stillness and humility. But when the blast of war blows in our airs, then imitate the action of the tiger‘. This Shakespearean advice has weathered the test of time successfully and historically. It is meant here for Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan in the way he has handled the Boko Haram terror with kid gloves so far, such that it has become a monster that is now threatening the trust on which Nigeria’s unity in diversity is based. In Nigeria there is an unwritten balance of power between the north and south which the Boko Haram is using religion to disrupt, thus threatening the soul of the Nigerian nation. That balance disturbance gave rise to the Nyako outburst. To restore the balance all the president needs to do is to vanquish Boko Haram quckly and swiftly to restore confidence in his official role as Commander –in Chief of Nigeria’s Armed Forces. It is also an advice that can be beneficial for the US President Barak Obama as he pledged support to US allies in the Pacific and Asia. Indeed a White House Correspondent pointedly asked him how credible he was on promises to Japan and S Korea. The question actually made the usually articulate US president to stutter in answering. Which is to be expected when he could not toe his red line on Syria over chemical weapons and Russia has recreated the balance of terror in recent times by seizing Crimea from Ukraine and promising to protect Russian speaking peoples in the former 15 now sovereign nations that made up the former USSR. At present US reluctance in shying away from war or confrontation and preferring diplomacy to war has led to a situation that has created the spectre of a third world war just because the US allowed Russian President Vladmir Putin to have his way first in Georgia, then Syria and now Ukraine. It is now clear that the absence of war is not a recipe for peace and lamentably so too, in this matter. On a lighter note, if indeed the disappearance of a plane with over 200 people can ever be that, I see the disappearance of the Malaysian plane in a new light given the apologetic language the Malaysian leader used to explain his nation’s inability to find the plane. He said even the ‘advanced nations’ could not have conducted the search better. Which to me is a sort of climb down language from an Asian tiger that has always claimed equality in terms of economic development and wealth with the so called advanced nations before, the plane disappearance tragedy. It is even more glaring that the technology to scan the depths of the ocean floors were and are still being provided by the so called advanced nations. Which still makes one to marvel at the wisdom inherent in that timeless advice of good, old Shakespeare, on war and peace.